


suppress / put an end to / extinguish

by warptimeandspace



Category: The Adventure Zone (Podcast)
Genre: Gen, Pre-Canon, TAZ Amnesty, also plot devices borrowed from narnia, dani had a whole other life on a whole other planet how wild is that guys, references to the war vs humans, the de-evolution of a planet, the quell
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-01-13
Updated: 2019-01-13
Packaged: 2019-10-09 05:35:02
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,600
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17400986
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/warptimeandspace/pseuds/warptimeandspace
Summary: Instead of life, Dani sees overwhelming death. The forest is swallowing itself, leaving burning tar where trees and leaves once lived. Looking at the carnage makes Dani feel violently ill. She feels consumed looking at the dying grass and the rotting wood. She had heard of The Quell, once, but she had thought it a cruel metaphor. She hadn't imagined ahunger.or dani, before earth.





	suppress / put an end to / extinguish

**Author's Note:**

> title is synonyms for the word quell!

People tell Dani that Sylvain used to be a wondrous planet.  
  
Magic flowed through the air, soaking every action her people took. The library Dani's mother drops her off at as she works is a testament to the golden age. The walls were carved without hands, magic sculpting a thousand years of history into the stone. The librarian, named Pallas, has watched over Dani since the birth of Quinn, her little brother, and is like family. Dani's parents do important work that she doesn't understand. She thinks that it has something to do with water and knows it takes them a very long time. Pallas takes care of her most of the time. Dani also knows that Pallas is very old. She is so old that she can remember the wonder. When Dani asks, Pallas tells her stories from before.  
  
"In the thriving," Pallas says, her eyes far in the past, "I never walked farther than a mile from my home. My mother had a gift with teleportation magic and took me many places across Sylvain. In our home, our rugs were woven of cloth from across the world, so far that now you would need a ship to travel there. They were beautiful. Blue. The borders of them were embroidered in ruby and silver flowers. They were charmed to repel dust, but my mother never cared. She made me shake them on the porch every Sunday even though they were always clean."  
  
"They sound pretty," Dani says. "Do you still have them?" She knows that Pallas and her wife live in the house Pallas grew up in and save lots of things. She can't have thrown the rugs away.  
  
Pallas' face falls. "I do not," She says softly, "They were destroyed during the invasion."  
  
Dani does not really know what the invasion was. She is very young, young enough that people still speak around her in code. She knows that there was a war where many people died. She knows that Sylvain was hurt very badly in the fight. She knows it makes her parents sad. Pallas is sad too.  
  
"What happened?" Dani asks.  
  
"When?" Pallas asks.  
  
"In the invasion," Dani says. "I don't know what happened. I'm not a baby, you can tell me. I won't cry."  
  
"Dani," Pallas says gently, "It's okay to be a child."  
  
"But everybody else knows!" Dani says. "Keeping secrets is mean, Pallas. You shouldn't do it."  
  
Pallas hesitates. She weighs the options, preserving Dani's childhood or helping her understand the world she lives in. Quinn crawls over to her and tugs on her ankles, whining to be picked up. Pallas lifts him onto her hip and holds out her free hand to Dani.  
  
"Alright," She says, "But if you get scared you tell me and I'll tell you a different story, okay?"  


Dani waits in Pallas' reading chair as she grabs the new book.  
  
"Alright," Pallas says, squeezing in beside Dani in the chair. "Are you very sure you don't want to talk about something else?"  
  
Dani nods.  
  
"Okay," Pallas says as she opens the book. This book is different than the picture books Dani usually reads by herself or the textbooks that Pallas reads to her. This book is handwritten, with pictures and drawings pressed instead of printed. Pallas takes a moment to sort through the pictures, taking only one before closing the book again.  
  
"When I was a little girl," Pallas says, "Some very angry people came to Sylvain."  
  
"Why were they angry?" Dani asks.  
  
"I don't know," Pallas says, "I never asked them. I was too scared. These people, they hurt us very badly. For more than a month I wasn't allowed to leave my home because my mother thought it would keep me safe. She thought that she could keep the war away from me, lock it outside. It didn't work. They came inside."  
  
"Who?" Dani asks.  
  
"The humans," Pallas says. "They were terrible. They broke all our windows and smashed down our door. They had knives and they cut my father. My mother tried to use her magic to take us away, but we couldn't leave. Something was wrong with the magic. My sister and I ran away while our parents fought."  
  
Pallas hands Dani an illustration. She sees a man's face, but he looks different than Dani's father and uncles do. The man's ears look half cut off, smoothed over round. His eyes are strange, not solid like Dani's but layered circles on top of each other. His enormous teeth are bared, not dainty sharp like Dani's but giant crushing bricks.  
  
"The humans killed my parents." Pallas says, "Then, they broke Sylvain's heart. If you ever see one, Dani, run far away."  


Over the next several years, Sylvain devolves very quickly.  
  
News breaks that the planet will only be able to support life for thirty more years. Dani's parents, who she now knows work in preservation systems, say this estimation may still be overly generous. The blame falls on the fractured heart. The best minds on the planet have no idea how to fix it. Back when magic thrived things might have been different, a mass mending spell could have been modified, but now there are so few who are able to access their previously thriving skills.  
  
Solutions to the problem of life on Sylvain get wilder and wilder. Some suggest that they try and find a new planet, passing through a portal like the humans did when they raided Sylvain. Others recommend reducing the population to ease the strain on the planet. In an official capacity, these options are both immediately rejected. Despite this dismissal, almost overnight gangs emerge, attempting to fulfill these ill thought out plans.  
  
The situation becomes all the more dire when the planet stops radiating arcane energy. In a matter of days, people start starving, their souls consuming themselves. The council approves direct contact with the heart as a temporary solution. Lines stretch through the capitol as sylphs wait hours to touch the heart for a single moment. Dani goes twice a week, holding Quinn's hand tight the whole walk. It isn't ever enough. A closed-door discussion results in the closing of Dani's school. There's no point anyway, the teachers whisper as Dani clears out her desk, her graduating class will be dead before they're grown. Her parents are almost always gone, working tirelessly to save a world that is dying beneath them.  


It's an off day, no crystal until the day after tomorrow. Dani wakes up to a note from Quinn that he's at the library. Pallas is teaching a makeshift school, firm that she didn't live through the invasion for children to forget history. Quinn is thrilled by it. He's an academic and in a better world would be learning library studies or the art of chronicling. Dani should go join them but she's tired. She needs some space, a break from all of this. Once, when she and Quinn were little, their parents took them outside the city. Dani vaguely remembers a forest with trees, the air fresh and clean. They haven't left the city in forever.  
  
Dani packs for a day trip. She shoves the throw quilt from the couch into the bottom of her backpack, stepping on it so that the fabric compacts more densely. More neatly on top of the blanket, she packs her leather-bound sketchbook and pens. Dani fills a water bottle and closes it tightly before adding it to her pack. Dani hesitates. Her plan is to draw something from the forest, like sky tall trees or blooming flowers, but she might not be able to find a viable subject. It might be a good idea to have a backup plan.  
  
Dani enters her parents' room. Her mother's jewelry dish is sitting on their bedside table. There are a couple of necklaces, a bracelet, and an assortment of rings. She's allowed to borrow them to draw whenever she wants but she doesn't usually take them out of the house with her. She gets nervous about losing things that don't belong to her. Eventually, Dani picks up two pieces, a ring set with sunset gems and a necklace made of dripping grey stone. Dani pockets them before leaving the house. She doesn't leave a note, she'll be home before Quinn gets back from the library anyways.  


Dani thinks she must be getting close to the forest. She can't smell greenery, but she's been walking for what feels like ever, so she has to be near something new. There is a hill on the horizon, blocking Dani's view of the world around her. She jogs to the top of it so she can try to spot the trees.  
  
Instead of life, Dani sees overwhelming death. The forest is swallowing itself, leaving burning tar where trees and leaves once lived. Looking at the carnage makes Dani feel violently ill. She feels consumed looking at the dying grass and the rotting wood. She had heard of The Quell, once, but she had thought it a cruel metaphor. She hadn't imagined a _hunger._  
  
Dani turns in the opposite direction.  
  
She _runs._  
  
She slams into a wall of stone.  
  
Dani falls into a forest. The ground is soft and the air smells of wet dirt. Before, she had been surrounded by sunlight. Now, Dani kneels in near darkness. She reaches a hand backward to feel for the stone, pressing firmly on it. She doesn't know what happened, but she may still be able to reverse it. She needs to go home.  
  
She can still go home.  
  
Where is home?

**Author's Note:**

> i'm hoping that this will be part of a little series, maybe three parts, but who knows! i'm on [tumblr](https://warptimeandspace.tumblr.com/) and i'm starting eighteen credits in less than forty-eight hours so let's hope this isn't my final fic! love you!


End file.
